The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts
by Tridentwatch
Summary: Harry is a squib. He has to rely on the horcrux entrapped within himself for magic, but the source can be unreliable and downright evil. He also has a time machine. Leave a review!
1. Chapter 1

I looked to the window and saw a death eater on a broom flying by the house. I pulled out my machine gun and fired at him through the window. The glass shatttered. The death eater screamed as bursts of blood erupted from multiple bullet wounds. I laughed, my eyes glinting madly - the reflection of my face on the shard of a window pane stared back at me and the red eyes of the horcrux said, "Go on, Harry, go further. Kill them all. They're right outside you know. Use your bag of tricks. Your machine guns, grenades and muggle weaponry. But they'll still get you because you have no magic."

"Magic is useless," I said, sneering at my reflection. "It doesn't help. It doesn't work!"

"Maybe not for you, squib," said the reflection to me, "That's all you are, a pathetic weakling boy who lived who thinks he has a chance at destroying the great Lord Voldemort."

"Fuck you, you're supposed to be my ally and help me."

"Help you? Why should I?"

A death eater walked through the front door. I fired my machine gun, chug chug chug, bullets flashed against an opaque shield glimmering like a sun. I covered my eyes and hissed to myself, "If you don't help me survive you die."

"If I help you, I may survive but my brothers and sisters may die."

"Since when is Lord Voldemort a gallant man, a chivalrous altruistic man? Do not fool me horcrux!" The thought I sent to him made me very angry because I felt weak that I needed Tom Riddle's help.

"Please," I begged, "Give me your magic."

"Oh very well," He said and the channels opened, the dam burst and magic began to flow through my veins. I laughed.

The death eater dissolved his shield when I stopped raining bullets down him. He sent a stunner. I grabbed my wand from my back pocket and shouted, "Avada Kedavra!" A jet of green light coiled from my wand around and around, a wave of spiralling death entrapping the death eater who had barged into my house.

"This is my house, bitch, all nine thousand feet!"

My curse cut through his feeble stunner and sent him flying outside, dead and stiff as a plank before he hit the frost covered grass. I didn't go outside, but crouched by the window and felt my hairs stand on end as a sizzling hot curse fried the wall, and bits of my messy black hair.

I picked up my black plastic and metal machine gun, made in China, and reloaded as calm and cool as if I had downed a couple valium. I hadn't. I was quitting that stuff but damn, why the fuck was it so hard to quit the benzodiazepines, those addictive sedatives got me hooked like a donkey on a hook, got me flying with my mind buzzing in all directions seeing hallucinations. The reflection laughed at this thought. I ignored him, propped up the gun against my knee and aimed at the open doorway.

The next death eater ran forward into the room. I blasted him off his feet. A drop of blood hit my cheek. It was warm. I wanted to lick it but didn't have time. A death eater's black cloak whistled by me as he burst through the room with a burst of potion enhanced physical speed. I turned, he punched me in the jaw and kicked my machine gun away. I drew my wand. He punched me in the stomach. I spat at his bone white mask and rolled on my back, away away.

The mask shattered revealing the face of Anthony Dolohov, a vicious man with the build of a bear. He tried to lunge at me. I was faster, using Tom Riddle's strength to draw my wand and point it at him. I hissed, "Crucio!" The wave of pain hit him I could see from the way his face curled into a grimace, his throat locked in a silent scream, a silent battle of wills. Would he shout, betray his honor by appearing weak? Purebloods were predictable to me, and I said to Tom Riddle in a little aside, "Hey man, is this the best Lord Voldemort can do?"

My magic - his magic, really - faded away at once as he stopped pouring it into me. I was back again, Harry Potter the squib who lived, commercialized and mass marketed, a rotten drug addict, known through the world infamously as the boy with no magic in his finger tips, couldn't even get into Hogwarts.

Well fuck that I had my guns, I had my grenades sitting in my palms. The crucio curse faded but bought me time to blast Anthony's face with a spray of bullets. I threw a grenade out the window, crouched and put my fingers in my ears. Nothing, nothing, count to three: One, two, BOOM! The explosion shattered all the windows in my house, my two story manor. I heard screams.

Gotcha!

"This is the police speaking. Come out with your hands up in the air, criminal!" A man with a microphone shouted at me.

Aw fuck the muggles were here, messing around. Well I needed to get out. "Tom, give me a bit of magic, I need to apparrate to London."

"Why should I? This situation isn't hopeless. I must preserve my magic for my own ends. You figure out a way."

"Come on, Tom!" I shouted aloud.

"We will give you three seconds to show yourself, criminal," The man said outside, "If you do not comply with the demands of the Police, you will face lethal repercussions."

I shuddered. The police just wasn't the same anymore, ever since they figured out the magical world was right under their noses. All the muggles were pissed.

Some even wanted revenge, others dissection to find the source of our - no, not our, never mine - abilities.

I disagreed with all and everything, because I was a rebellious child and I'm a rebellious man now. Dumbledore couldn't control me, Tom Riddle couldn't free himself from me. Harry may not be a genius but he's a sharp cookie, a Happy man with a Plan.

My plan was simple: win at any and all costs. I peered out the window, biding my time. I saw three cruisers parked at the curb. Police officers dressed in blue out and about, pistols drawn and ready for a gun fight. Where were the death eaters?

Pssh, had they apparrated out, leaving me to deal with their mess?

"They could be hiding in invisibility cloaks," Tom cautioned, "Waiting for you to screw up. Then they'll come in, kill the muggles and take you to my originator."

"Your originator's a weak, mad little fool," I said, "They may hide, but they won't run away, won't let go."

"It is discipline," Tom said. My reflection's eyes changed from emerald green to furious red, "You have none, therefore you are not qualified to make a judgement upon my predeccessor.

I'll judge whoever I wanted to but I hid this from Tom. My occlumency shields were compact and strong. I lifted up my gun, took a deep breath to reaffirm my shields and then pointed it through the window.

"He's got a gun! Shoot to kill!" Came the shouts of the officers. I pulled the trigger and let loose, waving my gun left and right. Magic enhanced, the firing was rapid at 600 bullets a minute, 60 bullets a second. Within a minute the cruisers were covered with holes and the officers were dead on the streets, filled with the lead of the bullets I had in my possession. Rapidly reloading, I heard the pops of apparrations fill the streets. Peering out to see a handful of death eaters approach the most shielded house in Britain, the last safe place against Lord Voldemort, leader of the wizarding world, I thought to myself: what a great day to be alive.

I walked out the door to face the band of death eaters. No helping it now, they could have apparrated right in the middle of my living room. Better to face them like a man.

"Bounce, bounce, time to bounce," I said, and whistled. A roar of an engine washed away the silence of the street. The Automotive Magical Vehicle arrived, a black Sedan rolling to the curb besides the crushed and destroyed police cruisers.

I raised my gun. The death eaters charged at me, spells afiring, hexes hitting everything, curses cutting through my body. As I made my escape I felt a blast of heat against my back. It burned my skin! The pain filled my mind, but into the back seat I went and I said to my driver, "Drive, drive, we have to bounce."

She nodded, "Of course, sir, where would you like to go."

I hit the robot driver on the shoulder. It hurt my knuckles. "Just drive, you dumb machine!"

She nodded again, "Please give me your destination."

Through the window I saw the death eaters firing at the car, blasting away at the engine. I felt the car shudder.

The robot who looked like a female woman in her mid thirties, six foot five, blond hair and fair skin on half a face, and the other half incomplete because I got her at a discount warehouse in Mexico, in the year 3012, suddenly went dead. Her power supply probably got destroyed by a spell or two.

Bounce, the car's seat threw me upward. A stunner broke through the windshield, hit my face and all went dark.

-

I woke up in a medley of noise: the wind howling through the forest, the crunch of footsteps against snow, packing it to the earth, the whisper of a mouse scurrying across the granite floors far away, the waves crashing against the shore.

After a few minutes of allowing myself to recover and take stock of the situation, I said to Tom, "It seems we're in a bind now, aren't we?"

"What do you want me to do about it?" He replied snidely, but his voice was weak.

"I'm sorry," I said, knowing it was the best way to ensure his help in the future, "That I used up most of your magic."

He said nothing. The next several hours were monotonous. I was in a cramped and empty cell with nothing to occupy me but the markings on the walls, probably made with overgrown nails. I saw a few droplets of dried blood here and there in my examination of the room. I also saw I could not escape.

The wind entered through the window, chilling the cell. It was the dead of night. Early morning came, and still the chill hadn't receeded. I was a storm of shivering and sneezing. If I hadn't caught a cold by now, I never would again.

The uniform of a death eater - black cowl and a sneering, scowling face - appeared in the doorway before me. He removed a rusty old key from the folds of his cloth and opened my cell. Through the bars I saw he had a wand looped in his waist. He drew it and pointed it at me. "Follow me," he said, "I want to show you something."

I stood up.

"Now's your chance," Tom said, "Charge at him."

"I prefer not to," I said aloud.

He eyed me like a bug. "Excuse me?"

"I said, I-"

"I heard what you said. Do you know where you are?"

"Azkaban," I said, "I can hear the ocean."

He grunted, "Yeah, and if you want to escape, you better follow me."

I grinned and followed. He took me to an observatory, through a route where we passed by nobody else. Completely isolated, yet close enough to the others in the fortress that I could hear their tortured screams of imprisonment, I felt fortunate.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Alfred Reece, I'm an archeologist interested in peace."

"And you moonlight as a wizard too? Your parents must be so proud."

"I am what I am, you are what you are and neither of us can help it. Look out there, what do you see?"

"Desolation," Tom and I said together, "Hopelessness. Death."

"And look at me, what do you see?"

"A wacko," I said. Tom said in my mind: Opportunity.

Alfred Reece nodded his great big head and smiled, showing yellow carnivorous teeth. "I sense great things about you Harry Potter. I'm interested in history and in the direction it takes. I'm muggle born, I don't want Voldemort in power all my life."

"This was the only job you could find?" I asked, "They'll know it was you. The death eaters will use truth serum."

Alfred shrugged, "You and I will escape together. But as it stands, the prophecy dictates you are the only hope."

An icy chill ran up my face. How does he know about that?  
'He's bluffing,' Tom said, 'Can't you see? Classic bluff.'

I squinted at Alfred, "Prophecy?"

"Don't play innocent," Alfred said.

The observatory was a bare room with a granite slab roof over it. There were no walls. The wind whipped through our cloaks.

"Why am I here? Not in front of Voldemort himself?"

"You are trivial, of no meaning," Alfred said, "Voldemort is attacking the world. You have no further role to play so he left you to rot at his pleasure."

"Typical," I said to Tom. He agreed.

Suddenly a bell rang in Azkaban, a roaring gong sound that startled Alfred. His face boiled into terror. He looked at Harry, intensely frightened, "The other gaurds!" He exclaimed, "They know you've left your cell. Lord Voldemort gave strict orders. They'll be hunting you now."

I nodded, my mind a whirl. I was in a sea of uncertainty. I looked at the few stars glittering in the night sky and drew strength with a deep inhalation of the cool fragrance of the ocean. "That's it," I said, snapping my fingers. "We'll have to swim for it."

Alfred poured into a hidden compartment on the floor of the Observatory of Azkaban. He opened it and pulled out a rickety broom. "We can ride this, if we go slowly and carefully."

"It looks ancient," I said, "And you'll have to be on it. I'm a squib."

"Who doesn't know?" Alfred said wryly. "Come, lets hurry. The sooner we get out of here-"

The doors to the Observatory banged open, and in walked a burly looking guard dressed in death eater black robes. "He's here!" He shouted. "Alfred has him."

He turned and glared at me. I swung my body behind Alfred and snarled, "If you come any closer I'll kill him."

The burly death eater laughed, "With what, your bare hands?"

"I'll rip his windpipe out with my fingernails," I hissed, "You know full well how violent the boy who lived is. The media-they say I'm a murderer already and I belong here."

Three more death eaters appeared in the room.

Tom said to me, "Grab the broom!"

I obeyed, feeling a river of magic come into my veins from Tom. I jumped on the broom and sped away. Around me a thousand lights flashed in an array of spellfire. I did not look back but headed South, toward the Ocean.

I spent days in flight, urging the broom to go ever faster. I did not think I was followed. For one, I did not travel in a straight line but looped around, changed directions, and was generally evasive in my movement.

Tom's magic poured into me, but eventually faded to a trickle. The broom slowed down as well. Three days into the journey with no land in sight. I was beyond weary, weak to the bone.

The magic left me at dawn of the third morning, and my broom plumetted into the ocean. "Fuck, Tom! A little warning, please?" I said in my mind as I fought the raging water with everything I had. Early childhood swimming lessons brought hidden instincts into play. I swam, floated, and waded through the cold water, soaked to the bone. My clothes weighed me down so I left them behind me and swam naked, shivering yet tightly clutching the broom. I would not die, I hoped. I was resillient, strong. Good genes, no magic, but good genes.

I lost consciousness several times during the journey, even when riding the broom. My back and neck throbbed with pain. My whole body become numb and icy with the chill that spread across my body, penetrating right through to my soul.

Tom was not a good conversationalist. He merely said when I confronted him with all my mental power, "You'll live."

Indeed I would. I was rescued by a muggle trading vessel. I woke up in a cabin, in the warmth of woolly sheets and a soft mattress. I sighed to myself when I became fully conscious. Staring into the granules of the wood as I lay on my bed, I said to Tom, "What do you think will happen to Alfred Reece? I hope he'll live but..."

Tom said, "He won't. You know it."

"Perhaps you're right."

"You need to get back to the time machine, get out of here."

"I don't know where it is," I said, "I must have left it somewhere. I simply don't remember."

"Amnesia," Tom said in a tone of disgust. I rejected his opinion and got up to my feet. I found an outfit laid out for me - jeans and a tee shirt. I wore them and walked barefeet to the deck, approached the first sailor I saw.

He was a small skinny man with a large beard. He grunted at me. "You should be in bed. Doc says you have pneumonia." His French accent was subtle but noticable nonetheless.

"On what vessel am I on? Where are we?"

He shrugged his shoulders and started to walk away. "Wait," I called grabbing his shoulder, "Tell me-"

He pulled away from me.

I felt very very alone. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Ship's Captain

The wind coursed through my hair. I could taste the salt on the breeze and the wood of the ship, and I could smell the aroma of the wood that made up the deck, and the slightly different wood that made up the hull of the ship. I grew to be an expert of observation in the month and a half we sailed along the ocean in a weary and tedious journey.

The crew spoke my language haltingly, a foreign language. They told me it was only used in rural villages anymore, and wasn't the International Standard.

Degun was a fisher man who had decided to find work on the ship setting sail to the distant lands of "Algradon," which was I assumed by the way they said it the most powerful land in the world. It was hard to understand them at times. He told me I should keep my head low. "People don't like wizards," He said to me in a whisper, at night, coming by my cabin with two plates of food. We sat down in front of each other and ate in relative silence.

He grew tense and uncomfortable. So did I. Tom prodded me to ask him more questions. "How does he know you have magic? He can't sense you're a squib like I can, but he can sense my magic. Ask him!"

I didn't ask him because I didn't care to. I had traveled through many worlds in many different times in many different ways and right now I needed a break, needed to relax and let myself flow with the river, not against it.

At the moment I didn't care much what happened to me. The crew didn't expect anything from me and they always fed me a meal a day. The ship was vast, and the crew were many and I hadn't seen the captain one. Though the Doctor aboard told me I had pneumonia and I also had the fastest recovery he had ever seen. I didn't visit him again for fear he might want to dissect me, such was the looks he gave me, the bug eyed scientist turned doctor.

But what Degun said got me curious. "Are you a wizard, then?" I asked him as he munched on a piece of broccoli. He lifted up his weather tanned face and squinted at me.

"No, I'm not," he said bluntly, "And I'll block your head if you suggest so again. Its bad luck to be a wizard. No woman wants a wizard for a husband. No Captain wants a wizard in his crew. No priest wants a wizard in his congregation. To be a wizard you dissociate yourself from the world, and are little more than a raving lunatic."

"Then how can you tell if I'm a wizard or not?" I asked him, grinning, "If you have admitted you have no extraordinary ability-"

Degun smirked at me, and pulled out an ivory knife made of elephant tusks, as he told me during his examination of the knife. I watched him play around with it and then said, "Okay what of it? You have a funny looking knife there, maybe it can skin a fish, maybe not."

"This," Degun proclaimed, "Is a wizard of a knife."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Don't look so skeptical. It led me directly to you."

"May I?"

He held it out to me and I touched it. I felt a jolt of electricity run up and down my spine like a bouncing ball bouncing on a trampoline. A consciousness that was not me and not Tom Riddle invaded us and I felt pushed aside as someone else took over.

Life returns to me.

So many years and years of watching, of being an observer, and now, Tom Riddle finally had a body.

I sat on the mattress and pondered my situation. Where was Harry in all this?

"I'm right here, Tom," said Harry in my mind, "Now you're in control."

"Amazing," I said staring at the knife. The ivory blade gleamed with a hidden malice. I felt almost afraid, but Lord Voldemort had nothing to fear. I had lived and learnt for a long life, until I was separated from my originator in that fateful spell – a reflection of my own ability used against me by a mother's love.

But what was this artifact that had restored me to power, to a young body and a life open ended?

"Enjoy it while you can," Harry said. His voice sounded condescending, as if he knew something I didn't. "It won't last for long." 

"How can you be so sure?" I said cautiously, "This might be a permanent change. You'll have to get used to it, Harry."

Harry laughed. I heard his chuckle: it grated on my nerves.

I chuckled to myself, imitating Harry's laughter. I stopped when I realized what I was doing. The thought of losing myself again, of being an observer to Harry's idiocy was the most terrifying thought of my life. Perhaps worse than death.

No, nothing is worse than death.

I stared down at Degun, "Where did you get this knife?"

He backed away from me, looking slightly uncertain, "Uh, Harry? Are you alright? Your eyes-"

"Am I any different than five minutes ago?" I said, "I am the one and the same, and this knife feels like it belongs to me."

Degun turned white with fear. I invaded his mind with all the force and finesse of a sledge hammer. I wanted information. I wanted it now.

Memories flashed by me like a river. I swam up current to find what I wanted: where was this ship headed to? Why?

I saw Degun speaking with the Captain. His memory was not clear, because he was a muggle most likely. I saw at once he had no magic. Wizards and witches have much more organized minds. He was in the harsh sunlight sitting on a dock with his feet in the cold water. The Captain approached him, and he was a strong and fearful looking man with a grim faced square chin and a body that rippled with muscle.

"You are Degun," The captain said. "I have been searching for you. The Councilor of your village recommended you to me."

Degun stood up on the dock, and saluted, "Captain?"

"Yes, I own a ship. I set sail to Algradon in the morning. I have need of a fighter, a warrior."

"I am good with bow and arrow," Degun said, nodding his head. "I am good in a boat too."

"A fisherman's boat," grunted the Captain. "I march against Algradon! It is but a mere tiny island but on it there lies men of great power. Wizards."

"Wizards?" Degun's eyes widened. His thoughts were open to me like a book – the thoughts he had had in a memory were as faint and scattered as the hues of the rainbow on a foggy day, refracted light. Such it was with a muggle's mind. Everything refracted, redirected, tangled up. No organization. It made my task to find information so much worse. He was afraid and excited because he remembered his grandfather from his boyhood day who was also a wizard.

Before I could proceed with the examination, I felt a sharp pain in my mind.

I pulled out of Degun's thoughts and memories, as a painful headache throbbed and drove me to distraction.

"Stop it!" Harry hissed, "Degun's a friend. I won't allow you to rifle through his thoughts, you hear me, Voldemort?"

I grunted and clutched my head, the waves of pain intensifying for a moment of painful punishment, then receding into the horizon of my mind.

It appeared, I thought in a wave of fear, that I wasn't in complete control after all.

"The Knife," I prompted to a shivering Degun. That was my only weapon aboard the ship. I was wandless. But what I had seen in his thoughts and memories was enough: we were traveling to an island of wizards. For a muggle attack, but it was obvious they would fail.

"It's yours, take it!" Degun fled the cabin.

I pondered his retreat: "He might tell the Captain of our true nature."

"Your true nature," Harry said. I felt the triumph in his voice and hated him so much at that moment that I could have-

"You can't do anything to me." Harry taunted, and then vanished until I could feel him no more in my mind, though I sent out tendrils of awareness, watching for any signs of activity other than my own. Though our minds overlapped, we still had territory that was entirely individual. I knew he was there, but hiding in his own mind, as hidden from me as if he never existed. If only!

But I knew he was there, an observer just like I had been, with far more power. I wondered if he could step in at any time and control me.

It couldn't be. I knew Harry Potter like the back of my hand. He would never willingly give up control. What happened with the knife, nobody could have foreseen.

For now, I had a body. I would not waste time. Lord Voldemort had returned. I set my will to creating plans: I must have control of the island of wizards. I needed that power.

And I needed a wand. I stared at the knife in contemplation, and picked up. I casted in a loud and clear voice, "Lumos!"

A bubble of jubilation rose in myself when the Knife glowed faintly white and bright against the alastor walls of my cramped cabin.

I could do magic!

I reveled in that thought, and spent the rest of the evening studying as much as I could of the knife, finding out its strength and limitations. Throughout the analsysis, as I used a list of spells in my mind as a guideline and ran through each one individually – they ranged from weak to difficult in terms of casting power, or at least that was how I chose to order the spells – I tried to elicit comments from Harry.

"What do you think of that one, boy?" I asked as I cast a particularly fiery spell. The Knife glowed a dull orange, its blade shimmering in a luminescent glow that illuminated the dark cabin as bright as a lamp, and as offensive as the Sun's rays to a baby's skin.

A whip of fire emerged from the handle of the blade, moving like a living beast-snake! My breath hissed parseltongue as the snake uncoiled itself, its sinewy body made up only of fire, flowing and unwinding.

Harry chuckled.

I grew very very afraid.


End file.
